[575] Brinton’s Myths of the New World, 176. One of the earliest accounts which we have of the Cherokees is that by Henry Timberlake (London, 1765), and he remarks on their lighter complexion as indicating a possible descent from these traditionary white men.
[576] Richard Broughton’s Monasticon Britannicum (London, 1655), pp. 131, 187.
[577] A Memoir on the European Colonization of America in antehistoric times was contributed to the Proceedings of the American Ethnological Society in 1851, to which E. G. Squier added some notes, the original paper being by Dr. C. A. A. Zestermann of Leipzig. The aim was to prove, by the similarity of remains, the connection of the peoples who built the mounds of the Ohio Valley with the early peoples of northwestern Europe, a Caucasian race, which he would identify with the settlers of Irland it Mikla, and with the coming of the white-bearded men spoken of in Mexican traditions, who established a civilization which an inundating population from Asia subsequently buried from sight. This European immigration he places at least 1,200 years before Christ. Squier’s comments are that the monumental resemblances referred to indicate similar conditions of life rather than ethnic connections.
The other advocate was Eugène Beauvois in a paper published in the Compte Rendu du Congrès des Américanistes (Nancy, 1875, p. 4) as La découverte du nouveau monde par les irlandais et les premières traces du christianisme en Amérique avant l’an 1000, accompanied by a map, in which he makes Irland it Mikla correspond to the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. Again, in the session at Luxembourg in 1877, he endeavored to connect the Irish colony with the narrative of the seaman in the Zeno accounts, in a paper which he called Les Colonies Européennes du Markland et de l’Escociland au xiv. Siècle, et les vestiges qui en subsistèrent jusqu’aux xvie et xviie Siècles, and in which he identifies the Estotiland of the Frislanda mariner. M. Beauvois again, at the Copenhagen meeting of the same body, read a paper on Les Relations précolumbiennes des Gaels avec le Méxique (Copenhagen, 1883, p. 74), in which he elicited objections from M. Lucien Adam. Beauvois belongs to that class of enthusiasts somewhat numerous in these studies of pre-Columbian discoveries, who have haunted these Congresses of Americanists, and who see overmuch. Other references to these Irish claims are to be found in Laing’s Heimskringla, i. 186; Beamish’s Discovery of America (London, 1841); Gravier’s Découverte de l’Amérique, p. 123, 137, and his Les Normands sur la route, etc., ch. 1; Gaffarel’s Etudes sur les rapports de l’Amérique, pp. 201, 214; Brasseur’s introd. to his Popul Vuh; De Costa’s Pre-Columbian Discovery, pp. xviii, xlix, lii; Humboldt’s Cosmos (Bohn), ii. 607; Rask in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xviii. 21; Journal London Geog. Soc., viii. 125; Gay’s Pop. Hist. U. S., i. 53; and K. Wilhelmi’s Island, Hvitramannaland, Grönland und Vinland, oder Der Norrmänner Leben auf Island und Grönland und deren Fahrten nach Amerika schon über 500 Jahre vor Columbus (Heidelberg, 1842).
[578] The account in the Landnámabók is briefly rehearsed in ch. 8 of C. W. Paijkull’s Summer in Iceland (London, 1868).
[579] There are various editions, of which the best is called that of Copenhagen, 1843. The Islendingabók, a sort of epitome of a lost historical narrative, is considered an introduction to the Landnámabók. Much of the early story will be found in Latin in the Islenzkir Annáler, sive Annales Islandici ab anno Christi 803 ad anno 1430 (Copenhagen, 1847); in the Scripta historica Islandorum de rebus veterum Borealium, published by the Royal Soc. of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen, 1828-46; and in Jacobus Langebek’s Scriptores Rerum Danicarum medii ævi (Copenhagen, 1772-1878,—the ninth volume being a recently added index).
[580] A convenient survey of this early literature is in chapter 1 of the History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North, from the most ancient times to the present, by Frederick Winkel Horn, revised by the author, and translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (Chicago, 1884). The text is accompanied by useful bibliographical details. Cf. B. F. De Costa in Journal Amer. Geog. Soc. (1880), xii. 159.
[581] Saxo Grammaticus acknowledges his dependence on the Icelandic sagas, and is thought to have used some which had not been yet put into writing.
[582] Baring-Gould in his Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas (London, 1863) gives in his App. D a list of thirty-five published sagas, sixty-six local histories, twelve ecclesiastical annals, and sixty-nine Norse annals. Cf. the eclectic list in Laing’s Heimskringla, i. 17.
Konrad Maurer has given an elaborate essay on this early literature in his Ueber die Ausdrücke: altnordische, altnorwegische und isländische Sprache (Munich, 1867), which originally appeared in the Abhandlungen of the Bavarian Academy.